It's a quiet week at BSR in some ways, and a busy one in others. Coming out of the July 4 holiday, you might notice that we have only one new review live this week. Gail Obenreder visited an exhibition at the Brandywine Museum of Art with a bold thesis: Betsy Wyeth, wife to iconic American artist Andrew Wyeth, played an enormous role in his vision, sometimes even sculpting the very environments that he painted. As Gail puts it, according to groundbreaking curator William L. Coleman, "much of Andrew’s work is the product of a lifelong dialogue between the artist and his wife ... many of his iconic images reflecting and illuminating environments surrounding the couple were ones that she in fact created."
As we mentioned in our July BSR in the Wild message, I am in Boulder, CO this week at the invitation of the Knight Foundation, where I'm joining a national Journalism Advisory Committee along with 10 other journalists and local media leaders from around the country. I'm proud to represent BSR and Philly arts journalism in this way.
On the home front, you know we're always working hard to secure our coverage. Journalism is a tough business nowadays, and that goes double for independent arts journalism. It's already time to look toward the fall and our coverage of the 2026 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, but we can't do it without your help. We're launching our first-ever Fringe Coverage Friends Drive (now through August 31), and the goal is simple: add 30 new Friends of BSR to our roster (an annual one-time gift of $72, or a monthly donation of $6) over the next seven weeks. This will directly support our coverage of this year's Fringe Festival. If we can also add five new Local Media Champions (a one-time annual gift of $240 or $20/month), that would be fabulous, too. Questions, or want to send a check in the mail? Neil Bardhan ([email protected]) is your man.
Thanks for supporting us through all these travels and transitions. As I introduce BSR to my colleagues on a national level, I hope you, our readers, can step up at home and affirm the value of what we do.
Alaina Johns
BSR editor-in-chief
